Country Club Seeks New Lender Overoaks Opens Course To Public While Shopping For Financing

September 5, 1986|By John Hill of The Sentinel Staff

KISSIMMEE — Overoaks Country Club Inc. is breaking with its original lender and will open the private club to the public to raise money until new financing can be arranged, club members have been told.

The lender, Sunrise Savings and Loan Association of Boynton Beach, has been under the control of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp. since July 1985, when it was declared insolvent and most of its top management officials were removed.

In an Aug. 15 letter to club members, Overoaks director JoAnn Overstreet said that Overoaks Country Club Inc. was dissatisfied with Sunrise's performance and is looking for a new lender to help finance the development.

Overstreet would not comment on the country club's relationship with Sunrise or on the financing of the project. She said she considers it a private matter.

According to county records, Overoaks borrowed at least $16.9 million from Sunrise on various notes taken out since the project was started in 1984. Overoaks was assured of further financing for the project, the letter to the members said, but the money never materialized.

The company now is looking for new financing, Overstreet said in her letter. But while that is being done, she wrote, Overoaks will have to generate its own revenue to cover expenses.

''During the interim period, we will be required to make some changes in the golf club operation that will assist us in increasing the cash flow and help us offset the continuing maintenance expense of the golf course,'' Overstreet said in the letter.

One of those changes was opening the previously private club to the public. On Aug. 26 the golf course opened for public play Mondays through Fridays, charging $18 a person for 18 holes and the use of an electric cart.

''I want to personally assure you that these changes are temporary and will be phased out as quickly as possible,'' Overstreet said in the letter.

Christopher M. Chappel, a member of the club's board, said some members were bothered by the club's opening to the public, but he said the move is seen as a way to increase the club's membership, now about 300. Once members of the public play the course, he said, they may like it and want to join when the public play period ends.

Members pay dues of about $110 a month, Chappel said, and will pay extra for other club activities. But facilities for those other activities, such as a gymnasium and pools, have not been built, Chappel said, so the stop-gap public-play move was needed.

He said some members he had talked to recognized the move as a short-term necessity.

''I don't think it's going to hurt anything,'' he said. ''The members are still treated well and given preference on tee times.''

The corporation also has brought in a new general manager, Jack Drawdy, for the project, Overstreet's letter said. Drawdy has 25 years' experience in banking, development and construction businesses, the letter said, and was most recently director of development for Southmark Heritage Corp.

Robert Griffis, a spokesman for Southmark Heritage, said Drawdy was responsible for supervising the construction of new facilities, and modernizing and expanding existing properties owned by the Dallas-based health-care and retirement housing company.

Besides the country club, the 1,034-acre project, being developed by the Overstreet family on the northwest shore of Lake Tohopekaliga, has 634 acres allocated for housing. Plans for the country club include the golf course, lighted tennis courts, a pro shop, swimming pool, locker rooms, a gymnasium and other facilities. So far, only the course, two tennis courts and some support facilites such as a locker room and a snack bar have been built, Chappel said.

Overstreet's letter to members did not say if the difficulties with Sunrise were slowing plans for the housing development.

Sunrise has had problems of its own.

Frederick Teed, a spokesman at the Atlanta office of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, the agency that oversees the FSLIC, said the FSLIC declared Sunrise insolvent in July 1985 and took it over, replacing the association's officers. The thrift has been run by the FSLIC-appointed managers since then. At the time of the takeover, FSLIC officials blamed the savings and loan's problems -- at the end of 1985, debts exceeded its $1.5 billion in assets by $167 million -- on a management policy of making loans to builders and developers rather than to homeowners.

Theodore Salb, Sunrise's new president, acknowledged that the thrift had lent money to Overoaks but would not discuss the status of the project or the thrift's involvement in it.

In her August letter, Overstreet said that after the new management took over Sunrise, Overoaks began to experience delays in loan requests and had to deal with a succession of thrift representatives.

''As quickly as we would establish project viability with a new account officer, he was released or transferred,'' she said in the letter.

''Due to these delays and our dissatisfaction with the current management we are in the process of securing other sources of funding and financing to assure project completion,'' she said.